2013 Eleanore Pettersen Lecture: Architect Sarah Wigglesworth

Thursday, February 28, 2013, 7:00pm - 8:30pm

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The Cooper Union is pleased to have Sarah Wigglesworth as part of the Eleanore Pettersen Lecture series speaking about her current work.

Since founding her London-based practice in 1994, Sarah Wigglesworth has developed a reputation for bringing great design to ecological buildings with innovative materials. At the heart of her firm’s interest in sustainability is a professed desire to help things run more efficiently, improve people’s well being, and make life more enjoyable.

Working primarily for public organizations and their communities, Sarah Wigglesworth Architects hopes to research and explore issues surrounding sustainable futures in its many aspects. Since 2006, the work of the office has grown in scope and has begun to encompass neighborhoods and master plans, such as the plans for Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire and New Cross, Lewisham. Wigglesworth explains that the scale is of interest “because of the greater opportunities it offers to help build truly sustainable communities (socially, financially and environmentally).”

Published and award winning projects include 9/10 Stock Orchard Street, the Sandal Magna Community Primary School, and the Siobhan Davies Dance Studios, among others (see images of all of these projects in the slideshow above). Together with her partner, Jeremy Till, Wigglesworth was the first architect to be awarded the Fulbright Arts Fellowship. In 2004, she was awarded the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Wigglesworth currently teaches at Sheffield University.

The Eleanore Pettersen Lecture, established through a generous gift to The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, is dedicated to the voices of women in architecture as a lasting tribute to Ms. Pettersen's significant impact in the world of architecture and her love of The Cooper Union. Pettersen, who had worked as an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright and would later design the post-White House home of Richard M. Nixon, was one of the first women to be licensed as an architects in New Jersey, and developed a successful practice there that spanned over fifty years.

This lecture is presented in the context of the exhibition Lessons from Modernism and the examination of concepts and practices of sustainability in contemporary architecture. The exhibition, lecture and associated events have received generous support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

FREE for current students/faculty/staff of The Cooper Union and League members; $15 for non-members. For more information on ticketing please go here.

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Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.